Nope (2022).
The Stage.
The residents of a lonely gulch in inland California bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery.
The Review.
Nope is about the convergence of a few people in a desert town near Los Angeles called Agua Dulce as they all discover something strange hanging around in the sky. The main character is OJ, played by Daniel Kaluuya. He’s inherited a horse farm that trains horses for Hollywood films. His sister, Emerald (Keke Palmer), is an underachieving but multi-talented Hollywood hopeful. Also in town is “Jupe” (Steven Yuen), an ex-child actor who endured a tragedy on-set and now runs a small Western-style theme park close by. Rounding out the main cast is Angel, a Fry’s installation technician.
There’s a lot to unpack with Nope, but I guess I’ll start by referencing Jordan Peele’s first two films by saying that Nope is far closer in execution to Us vs. Get Out. I think that Get Out is a brilliant film, one with a clear story that, while kind of outlandish, makes sense. The themes are well outlined and the characters motivations are clear. In contrast, Us is technically brilliant, but didn’t make sense. When held up to scrutiny, the plot falls apart. Nope is technically brilliant - the framing of shots is amazing, the actors are great, the music is haunting, and there are several scenes here that are absolutely terrifying. But when you apply logic to the proceedings, the film falls apart.
As the credits ran, I felt a lot of the same feelings I had about watching The Master in that the parts were much greater than the sum. I had a lot of fun watching it, but once the mystery is solved, there are a lot of things that don’t make sense. For example, the opening scene, featuring a killer chimp on a television sitcom set, is terrifying (even if the CGI chimp doesn’t look great). It’s followed by a shot at the ranch as objects fall from the sky, again, super well done. There’s also an extremely effective scene featuring the Western ranch that will probably stick with me for a very long time.
There are several themes that I see at play in Nope, and maybe honing in on one or two of these themes would have made things a little more clear. For example, there’s the theme of unspoken agreements with predators, ie. not looking them in the eye. There’s also a theme of trauma and how people deal with and manifest that trauma. There’s also a theme of whites taking accomplishments from black people, and finally, the theme of capturing that impossible shot in a film. Very few of these wrap up in a satisfying way.
Take the last two, for example. OJ and Emerald believe that a clear shot of the thing in the sky is going to change their lives. Perhaps that’s true, but it’s certainly not a guarantee in an age when you can look on Twitter and see extremely well done fakes swapping Willem Dafoe into Julia Roberts’s role in Pretty Woman. In the end, they end up with a photo, and we’re supposed to believe this is a huge victory for the farm. I wasn’t convinced. Adding to that is the presence of what I thought were news stations standing outside of the theme park, leaving me to assume they’d gotten the necessary shots already.
As for the monster design, I thought the idea was cool. I also found it extremely hard to believe that no one had seen it before. It’s also never quite explained how the monster changes shape, going from cloud, to floating sand dollar, to ribboned Rorschach test.
The End.
Nope is my second favorite Jordan Peele movie, but I don’t know if I’ll ever watch it again. I think it’s really well made, but once you understand the mystery and kind of dissect what’s going on,
